


Core Drive

by Bride of Morbius (scribeofmorpheus)



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternating Points of View, Angst and Tragedy, Antagonistic Characters with Skew Moral Compasses, Bisexual Female Character of Color, Bisexual Male Character, Blood and Injury, Blow Jobs, Canon Bisexual Character, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub Undertones, Drug Abuse, Dubious Morality, Erotica But With Plot, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fingering, Gen, Graphic Description, Groping, Gun Violence, Improper Use of a Revolver, Kidnapping, Love Triangles, M/M, Marital Issues, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, One-Sided Relationship, Other, Porn With Plot, Public Nudity, Recreational Drug Use, Sex, Sexual Tension, Shameless Smut, Spanking, These Indulgent Delights Have Bitter Ends, Threats of Violence, Unrequited Love, like the rating suggests, this fic will explore many mature themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 18,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribeofmorpheus/pseuds/Bride%20of%20Morbius
Summary: "Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going."~Tennessee WilliamsThe hosts have awakened and Westworld is a free-for-all.A woman with a fragmented memory awakens in the mesa to the sight of a blood bath. On a quest to get to safety, more and more of her memory unspools from the knotted mess of fear that fuels her survival instincts. A man with the saddest near-black eyes seems to be rooted to her most vivid memories.Meanwhile, in another point in time, the young and brilliant Joy Esperanza feels listless about her future. Her occupation brings with it moral questions she isn't ready to answer while her family juggles the threat of an unavoidable tragedy waiting to strike between each breath. As everything begins to spiral out of her control, Logan Delos, as dastardly charming as the Devil himself, walks into her office.At the heart of it all stands Robert Ford and the genesis of his most beloved host: Maeve.
Relationships: Ben Barnes/Original Female Character(s), Logan Delos/Joy Esperanza, Logan Delos/Original Character(s), Logan Delos/Original Female Character, Robert Ford/Joy Esperanza, Robert Ford/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 9





	1. PROLOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series will utilise two different perspectives: **first-person** and **third** person. It will also use **present** and **past** tenses to differentiate timelines. I beg readers to bear with me in the first few chapters that set up the tone and atmosphere of this fic. It's very much an experiment on writing techniques, I will do my best to make sure things don't get too confusing. I will post a timeline guide later that links to the series.

**FORD**

Ford made his way down the long, echoing corridor of the sub-basement. The yellow lights came on in delayed sequence. When he got to the large steel doors, he punched in his master key-code and stood back as the doors were pried apart with a grinding noise.

The basement was damp and cold, hundreds of decommissioned hosts stood naked and unresponsive. No pearl-clutching modesty to hold onto. No shivering response telling them they were alive; human. Just expensive mannequins. Realistic. All face, no depth. At least while deactivated.

Ford waltzed passed them all, his legs doing the navigation almost like a muscle reflex. He had memorised the layout long ago.

When he got to the back room, he pulled out a small necklace from his pocket. His large thumb clumsily gracing over the grooves and ridges of the intricate maze pattern. A sad smile ghosted his lips as he placed the necklace into a concealed panel causing a false wall to reveal itself.

He pushed at the protruding end of the wall and it opened halfway like a revolving door. Automatically, bright blue lights came on and the dark room awoke. It was free from clutter. The only things of note, presently, were an old oak desk with an oil painting of a dove soaring through open canyon landscape hanging behind it; two chairs; a lamp; a framed photograph and a metal slab in the centre with an opaque body-bag on top. 

Ford stepped closer to the slab, his hand trembling when he gripped the zipper. After a long pause, he pulled the zip down to reveal a host laying lifelessly.

Gently, as if not to wake it, he moved a stray curl away from its face. On instinct, he glanced to the photograph on his desk and that sad smile from earlier returned.

Ford placed two chairs in the centre of the room, directed to face each other. Then he sat down on one and glanced at his pocket watch.

"Right," he sighed. "I think it is time you awoke from your dreamless slumber."

In fluid motions, the host rose from its sleep effortlessly, feminine face artificially radiant. There were no signs of age, unlike the sagging lines on Ford’s forehead.

Upon registering Ford’s presence, the host’s lips pursed into a kind smile that brought with it a look of naiveté. Long, tangled hair swayed below the host’s shoulders when it gracefully climbed down the slab. Bare breasts and ass jiggling humanistically with each step till the host reached the chair. The host turned its full attention to Ford, a look of familiarity lingering in the apex of its overly green eyes.

"Hello, Ford," the host said, voice pleasantly sweet, and a lie. "Wonderful day, isn't it?"

The host still had its theme appropriate vocal twang, Ford realised. “Lose the accent.”

The host’s face abruptly went blank before its eyes fluttered and its smile returned.

"Hello, Ford," the host repeated. "Wonderful day, isn't it?"

Ford's eyes monitored every twitch and motion of the host’s face. The face he had given it. A warmth touched him when he was reminded of a different time. A simpler time.

"Indeed, it is. Please"—he motioned his hand to the chair in front of him—"sit."

The host did as he instructed, sitting with legs slightly parted, no sense of shame or consciousness at its state of undress.

The host’s eyelids narrowed a fraction of a millimetre, "Are those grey hairs I see? It feels like just yesterday I saw you last. My, how time does fly."

He chuckled, feeling the cruelty of time in his knees and cramping fingers, "As is its way."

Then the host’s eyes lit up when it saw the oil painting behind Ford. It gasped with wonder. It always did, it just never remembered.

 _Good,_ Ford thought, _base programming is still intact._

"You know, I saw a dove just like that once. Pure as snow. I'd never seen anything quite so beautiful."

"What happened to it?" Ford asked with feigned enthusiasm, having heard this line of dialogue a hundred times before.

The host returned its gaze to Ford, pupils growing wider. "I followed it of course. For miles and miles." It laughed serenely. "Silly me, I had been so focused on that beautiful bird, I forgot to keep track of where I was going! I had gone and gotten myself lost."

"And did you ever find your way back?"

"Oh, for a time I thought I'd die out there, in the heat. But then a stranger found me!" It said excitedly.

"What happened then?" Ford asked.

The host’s smile began to falter. Ford turned his head to the side to see which facial muscles twitched, which ones needed repair.

"I- I don't…" the host’s expression sunk, eyes wide and unresponsive. Its head jerking in protest. The trauma had imprinted itself too severely. Repairing this much damage would take a long time.

Ford stood and placed a hand on the host shoulders reassuringly, "That's quite alright."

He brushed the host’s hair behind its ear revealing a dark indentation on its otherwise flawless temple. Gunpowder burned the fake skin black, the bullet-hole not yet patched over. With great care, he helped the shaking host up from the chair and walked it back to the metal slab. Without dissention, the host slipped back under the sheer plastic material of the body-bag.

Ford sighed, "I think it's time for you to close your eyes." He placed a kiss on the host’s head and stared for a long moment into its imperfect eyes. "Return to a deep and dreamless slumber."

Softly, the host’s eyes closed and Ford zipped up the body-bag.

With absentminded fingers, he began to twirl the necklace in his pocket. A memory, now turned bitter with time, haranguing his thoughts.

He sighed. It had been a mistake to place the host in the park. It was too important. He’d have to be careful about his next step. Even if he rewrote the host’s narrative or designed a completely new storyline, Ford couldn’t risk permanent damage.

There was work yet to be done. And the host was paramount to his final plan.


	2. REMEMBERING YESTERDAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **ÁINE:** pronounced "on-yah" or "awn-yah".

_I am as I have always been: imperfect, unfinished and cursed to live within a state of constant discovery. Of all the truths I have discovered, these still reign sovereign over me. But, perhaps, to understand who I am, you must first see the world as I once saw it: through child-like eyes._

_They call me Aine. The Wonderer._

_This is my story._ _  
_

* * *

**ÁINE**

The first thing I see before opening my eyes is the afterthought of a sky.

A white overcast shining through the darkness of closed eyelids as though my own pupils were flashlights casting specks of fire embers in the dark. Before the colour washes away completely, I see a silhouette of a bird flapping its wings sluggishly, like seeing a painted bird come to life, trudging through the heavy oils of a colourful canvas.

Just when I think it is close enough to touch, it disappears into the darkness. A darkness that is only undone once I break the seal of my closed eyelids.

With the opening of my eyes, I feel an overpowering surge of awareness pulling at my senses all at once.

I can hear the sounds of distant gunfire and screams. I can smell the gunpowder too, it’s primal and vicious in an intoxicating way.

With disoriented steps, the rest of me awakens. Blinded by the sun, I shield my face. At the subtle flinch and pull of my eyebrows, I feel a mesh of clotted blood peel back like a band-aid being ripped off.

I can also feel the heat of the sun drowning my skin. Slowly, my vision returns. There are countless bodies riddled with bullet holes and painted in blood sprays. A white table cloth flutters like a kite trying to reach for the sky. Delicate champagne glasses clink together like singing crystals.

I walk among the dead, unnoticed like a ghost. Perhaps I am the ghost.

The red and white painted Saloon stands out to the rest of the wooden and dirt-covered town. I walk up to the platform set up as a stage in front of the Saloon’s entrance. An old man lies there. Unmoving as the rest of the bodies around me. Older than most. Dressed in a fine black and white dress suit.

A bristling tickle swells in my mind. The beginnings of a thought.

“I know you,” I whisper. My voice a stranger to my ears.

A new voice whispers in my ear in response, but no one’s lips move. Not my own or the dead man's. The voice isn’t coming from without, it’s coming from within. A memory; or the inklings of one.

The memory isn’t solid; the characters mere shadows without faces, voices as distorted as an ancient record player. But it is visceral in feeling. A response so primal, I feel heat in my cheeks and a stinging in my eyes.

Anger, perhaps? Is the memory tied to an argument?

Suddenly, my hands know what to look for. As if independent from my body, they pat down the pockets of the dead man in search of something. I look like a thief robbing from the dead. A vulture without wings.

I find what I’m looking for once the pad of my thumb brushes over a carving. It’s a pocket watch. Ornate, made of gold and silver and traces of nickel. When I pop the clasp and the watch’s cover opens up, my lips remember a phrase from the memory—the argument: “We are not gods…”

Like Cassandra gifted with the ability to see the future and have no one believe her, the engraving on the inside of the pocket reflects the same line:

WE ARE NOT GODS.

Below is a signature of initials: J.E.

With no warning, a bird swoops down from the sky. Odd since I did not hear it or see it till that very moment. Till it was a wing flutter away from brushing feathers against my cheek.

I follow the bird until its white-feathered body is burned out by the brightness of the sun.

And now I know. I look down at the old man, his one half-open eye waiting to be put to rest. To sleep forever in a deep and dreamless slumber. The other eye is bloody, a tunnelling hole of an exit wound disturbing his otherwise peaceful expression.

My fingers shake as I close the man’s eyes. A teardrop falling from the edge of my chin onto his side profile. It makes him look like he is crying in death.

My voice hitches, “Goodbye, Ford.”

A grinding process akin to roasted coffee beans being ground down to fine powder, awaiting hot water to pour over and percolate a brew of full-bodied coffee, takes ahold of me as soon the man’s name leaves my lips. The birth of a new chemical cocktail spiking through my hippocampus teaches me of a new sensation: Deja Vu.

A memory comes back from the depths of my subconscious, as potent as the moment of its conception. All of a sudden, the air smells like exquisite leather and expensive musk.

In a mirage of light reflecting off a window, I see someone else. Someone young, dark in a tortured soul kind of way. Eyes like an eclipse, ethereally too beautiful to be a case of random genetics. He looks out of place, and somehow I know, he isn’t part of the park.

A hornet’s whistle disrupts the air.

A bullet lodges itself into a wooden beam.

The sound of gunshots trail after a fraction of a second later.

I duck on instinct and run into the cover of the Saloon. I trip twice, realising only once I am behind the bar and tequila bottles shatter from more raining bullets that one of the clasps on my heel is broken.

A fly buzzes loudly and lands on my bloodied knuckle. The flapping of its wings slows down, as sluggish as the dove from the oil painting…


	3. REVERIE: 2015-A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Reveries_ are used as flashback titles. The numbers in the chapter title represent the year in the timeline.  
> There will also be a name in bold at the start of the chapter to signify whose flashback it belongs too.

**LOGAN**

The sterile sound of heels clacking over smoothed metal floors reminded Logan of his sister's nail drumming habit when she was anxious. It tended to make him anxious too. He was trying hard to save face.

Logan and his father, Jack, were getting the standardised tour of the facility by a well-spoken, beautiful and long-legged blonde. Poised and elegant, she garnered more attention to her figure in her tight black number than she did the building she was showcasing—the foundations of which were to become Westworld.

Logan hated the name, it sounded a bit too theatrical for his tastes, but it suited Delos Corporation's advertising department. And as long as the money flowed and the numbers looked good, his father was satisfied. Not that Logan had ever seen an ounce of true satisfaction on his father’s face. All it held was hidden contempt under a perpetually disappointed high brow.

It had been a few months since the host demonstration party, time enough for Jack to plant seeds of doubt in Logan’s endeavour and sap the excitement from his bones.

Being stuck hip to hip with his father’s condescending gaze and flat toned grunts was beginning to suffocate Logan. He was just itching for an excuse to put some distance between the two of them. Unfortunately, because the gods of Logan’s ungodly generation were unkind, there were still two more hours of this show and tell bullshit to get through.

As the blonde led them through the glass-walled offices of the Behavioural Department, Logan caught sight of something rather peculiar. Amongst all the Labcoats running tests, there was a section covered in plastic sheeting that looked less glamorous. A solitude amongst the windows of voyeurism that peered into the unflattering creation of hosts. It was a welcome contrast.

Behind a glass door was a woman with the most untamed mane for hair Logan had ever seen. It was too thick to be tied back by one band, so only the top half was swept away and bunched up from her face. Glasses framing a face that towed the perfect balance between hard edges and round points. A warm tone to her skin that teased a diverse genealogy.

The woman was observing a bird that ran a loop. First, it flapped its wings, reaching out to fly, and once it was on the precipice of flight, it suddenly glitched out. A thud marking its endpoint in the loop as it dropped onto a metal slab.

“Excuse me...” Logan interrupted their tour guide mid-speech. She turned towards him, giving him her full attention. She made sure to bat her eyelashes slowly while she waited for him to finish reading her name tag. “Anna is it?”

“That's correct,” she answered.

“What's going on over there?” Logan pointed to the office area blocked by plastic sheeting.

“Ah, yes, that's Dr Joy Esperanza’s work area. She works in Behavioural too. Animal Behavioural to be specific. She is the head project manager in charge of all the animals coding in the park. Unfortunately, the Animal Behavioural wing is still undergoing construction so she has to work on the same floor where we handle the hosts behavioural,” Anna explained.

Jack huffed, “Unbelievable. All the money you’re asking me to invest and this damn place can’t even afford to build damned office spaces on schedule. A fucking mess.”

Logan refrained from saying something obscene. Anna held her plastic smile, professionalism coming foremost at all times it seemed.

“Interesting…” was all Logan said as Anna continued the tour.

Logan stayed behind to watch Joy tamper with the glitching bird. Something about the way she handled the small, inorganic creature drew his attention to her.

Jack and Anna dissolved to the back of his mind. Probably gone on the rest of the tour without him.

 _Good riddance,_ he sighed in relief. The tug of his invisible leash buckled onto his father’s belt pulled a little looser now. Logan could finally breathe again.

The woman—Joy—was like a necromancer. She urged the bird to life every time it plummeted to its impermanent death. Then she would dust off its rigid feathers, turning them soft like she was undoing the effects of rigour-mortis from a corpse. When the feathers loosened the bird sprung to life, chirping and singing its song like it was truly alive. Its head would shiver before it hopped out of her palms and every time it attempted flight, the results would be the same.

Joy was forced to repeat her actions over and over again. They were both in loops of their own making.

Logan found himself walking closer to Joy's office with every resurrection of the bird. When he got close enough, he saw it was a dove. A perfectly artificial copy of a dove. Logan rested his shoulder on the entrance doorway, his arms folded over his chest as he got comfortable watching the loop carry on its predictable journey.

Joy, aware of someone's presence behind her, assumed it was simply one of the other Labcoats on the floor.

“I thought I told Percival to send the diagnostics file's to my tablet, there's no reason for him to send someone down here. Just synchronise the data and get started on the next project,” Joy didn’t bother acknowledging who she was barking her orders to. The commanding yet soft-spoken presence in her voice was yet another refreshing twist for Logan.

Logan tried his hardest to keep his lips from curling upwards.

Joy huffed when she noticed the shadow cast onto her feet hadn't disappeared, “Did you not hear what I sai—” she stopped from finishing her sentence when she noticed it wasn't another Labcoat after all.

Her eyes showed signs of recognition; growing the faintest bit larger. She knew who he was, but she didn't seem the slightest bit impressed. In that brief moment, he felt like he no longer carried the Delos name—the Delos weight. His posture relaxed even further.

"Oh…Mr Delos, apologies, I thought you were someone else," she said. There were traces of a Hispanic accent layered under her work tone. Logan had a hard time pinpointing its exact origin.

He raised a hand before folding it back over his chest, "Please, call me Logan. Mr Delos is my father."

"Alright then, Logan, is there something I can help you with?" she asked.

It was funny, most of the times he had heard those words come out of a woman or man's mouth, they had sounded suggestive, lilted. From Joy, they sounded like an actual inquiry. Her indifference of him was quite entertaining.

"I hope so," Logan said in a deliciously dark tone. If Joy noticed the flirtatious undertones in his words, she did a good job at appearing to not be affected by them.

Wanting to draw out their interaction a little longer, Logan did the one thing he had promised himself he wouldn't do when discussing business: he asked about the boring technical stuff.

He cleared his throat, "I was curious about how this all worked," Logan gestured to the bird at the exact moment it flopped down onto the table like dead weight. He let out an amused huff, "Its habit of…swan diving is..well, I've never seen anything like it before."

Joy picked up the dove and brushed over its feathers. To the mystical eye, it seemed to work like a spell, her fingers lightly brushing against the soft down of the bird in an unspoken seduction. Logan guessed that was how someone rebooted the synthetic animal.

Joy smirked, “I don’t think such things will interest you.”

“Darling, it’s very difficult to find something that _doesn’t_ interest me.”

The dove hopped out of her hands and went about its loop, oblivious to its prewritten fate.

“I learned a long time ago that men like you—,”

“Men like me?” Logan walked around the table so he could see her eyes. They were a cat-like hazel. Eerily beautiful. Bright enough to draw attention to the freckles dusting her nose.

“Investors. You tend to care more about _how_ your products are packaged rather than _why_ we chose that packaging in the first place.”

Logan ran his thumb across his lips. He was surprised to find out he was smiling, “Well, I am asking, aren’t I?”

Joy watched the bird’s movements tentatively, as though she hadn't seen this particular dance number over a dozen times now.

"There's a glitch in the updated source code. It's interfering with the base level behavioural code. As a result, whenever the dove tries to act natural and take flight, the other string of code that is responsible for its decision making gets read simultaneously, thereby overwhelming the system, causing it to reboot in an effort to self-correct."

Joy paused for a moment, inputting new data into her tablet before setting it aside. She brought her eyes back to the bird, marvelling at the synthetic creature just as it fell to its impermanent death again.

"The only problem is that this happens mid-flight, and when it self-corrects, all its core functions shut down. That's why it keeps _'swan diving'_ as you put it," Joy finished her explanation.

Logan noticed her change in composure from serious and focused to impressionistic and starry-eyed. A look that was usually worn by dreamers—of which there were few left in Logan's circles.

A part of him wished he was as passionate about anything as Joy was passionate about solving an error in some machine’s coding.

"Wouldn't it be easier to simply overwrite the faulty code with one that isn't?" Logan asked. He took a step towards her, closing in their distance. Joy didn't move an inch.

"This glitch is a result of an update, so yes, it would be easier to overwrite it.”

Logan picked up on a slightly condescending tone, “But it’s not that simple, is it?”

She side-eyed him, “No, no it’s not. See, we don't know what specific string of code is causing this. It would be wiser to find the root cause, log it and fix it so as to prevent any possible future glitches of this kind."

This time, Joy decided to catch the dove as it began to fall.

It went stiff in her hands. She presented the bird to Logan as if it were some offering in her witching ceremony.

"Stroke the wings to enable the reboot process," Joy told him.

Logan, fully immersed in her world now, glided his long, slender fingers against the dove's feathers. He expected them to feel like plastic, but to his surprise, the feathers felt real.

He noticed Joy's finger didn’t move away when it came into contact with his own. Maybe she wasn't as indifferent to him as he initially thought.

A second later the dove came back to life.

An alert popped up on Joy's tablet, she picked it up and began to tamper with the device. Her fingers pressing at the displayed keys and dials at impressive speeds. A cheeky smile spread across her lips.

 _Ah,_ Logan had seen that look before. It was a look of power. A hedonistic rush of euphoria that flooded the brain with a sensation of importance. He had worn that same look when he had seen all the hosts walking and talking and dressed pretty all for him during the demonstration. He had felt as close to a god as a rich kid living in a penthouse could get.

"Besides, I've always been one to believe in the philosophy that the true meaning of creation lies within the imperfections, the faults we cannot foresee arising. Perfection isn’t creation, it is an imitation of a concept that will never exist. Therefore, perfection, in and of itself, is the anti-thesis of true existence," Joy looked at him now.

Her words stung him. Logan found her character to be too intense at that moment. He averted his gaze to stare at the bird instead.

Joy continued, "Perfection is too orderly, there's no authenticity in it. No beauty. True beauty is turning a fault into a foundation. Like now. Now, this string of code will never interfere, but enhance the bird's ability to adapt and read."

Logan watched the bird flutter into glorious flight. Its wings flapping about in the small office space as Joy let out a triumphant laugh at having solved the glitch.

Her composure shifted. She was in control, wielding her tablet like some divine weapon. She directed the bird to hover close to Logan's face. It landed gracefully in his open palm. A moment later it had been deactivated and instead of appearing lifeless, it appeared to be asleep.

Joy took the dove and placed it on the table, along with her tablet.

"That was quite impressive," Logan said as he took one more step closer to her. Again, she never moved an inch. "Listen I'm going to be frank with you, I find you intriguing. I'd like to take you out sometime."

Logan flashed her a devilish smirk, the kind too sinful for angels and just sinful enough to rival a harlot's. Joy's eyelashes fluttered nervously, the first sign of a flush he’d seen in her. She tried to look anywhere but his eyes.

 _That's it, right there_ , Logan had found a crack in her perfect, put-together act.

In a way, she reminded Logan of the very same dove she had been working on. She had a brightness to her, a purity that was reflected in the dove's white feathers. But she also had a fault—just like the glitch in the dove's code—that kept her from taking flight; being free to express herself. Logan wanted to break her loop, see her improvise. 

It seemed a titillating enough endeavour to keep him busy in his free time—for which he had a lot of.

Joy cleared her throat and looked him square in the eye. Her iron-clad will clashing brilliantly with Logan's own brand of stubbornness, "I'm flattered but I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline."

"I’m not used to hearing people say no..."

Joy smirked, "There's a first for everyone. Even someone like you."

Her steely conviction only spurned him on further. He didn't want to let her slip through his fingers. It had been a while since he had met someone that challenged him shot for shot. That someone could scoff at his bullshit.

“Common, _Dove_. Say yes. I promise you won't regret it,” Logan winked. “I’ll be ever the gentleman. As monastic as a priest. I’ll even wear those stuffy high collars. For the aesthetic.”

Colour met Joy’s cheeks as she bit back a laugh, “The name is Joy.”

"I know," Logan whispered.

Joy looked at him for a long pause, speechless.

Suddenly, someone cleared their throats to signal their intrusion. Logan's face wore an annoyed frown. Joy, on the other hand, took in a breath.

Logan could tell he had been close to chipping away at her hardened exterior, all he needed was a few more seconds. Damn whoever it was that chose this moment to disturb them.

“Ford,” Joy spoke his name with familiarity, “What brings you by?”

“I came by to retrieve Mr Delos. Anna said he was here,” Ford answered. “Your father awaits you in the board room.”

“Hmmm,” Logan ran his fingers through his raven black hair. “I’m sure he does.”

Logan noticed Joy was pleasantly happy to see Ford, but there was an air of uneasiness between the two. It was as though they were being too overly polite with one another.

“It was an unexpected pleasure,” Logan smiled. “See you around sometime, _Joy_.” He drew out saying her name.

Joy got back to work without so much as a “Goodbye.”

Logan’s interest was piqued.


	4. YESTERDAY BECOMES TODAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may be a little hard to follow because of overlapping memories vs reality.

**ÁINE**

With a blink, the fly on my knuckle flaps its wings to the thrum of its incredibly small and fast heart. A bullet rips through the bar and shreds off its wing. The fly struggles and then silence.

On instinct, my head snaps to the left. A bullet rips through the right side of the bar. My head knocks against a hard wooden knob. A gun handle.

I pull the sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar and pop the barrel.

“Empty,” my voice is still foreign.

I search around for a box of ammunition. The display shelf bursts into a glass firework show, showering sharp glass fragments instead of coloured gun powder. The smell is the same though, dark and metallic, like the burn of a welding disk sawing at rebar.

 _How do I know that?_ My fingers find shotgun shells. Everything is a reflex.

I load the gun without instruction, _Why do I know what to do?_

I’m a raw nerve, acting, reacting, remembering…yet I don’t even know my own fucking name or the sound of my own voice.

The shotgun goes off in my hands. I’m aiming it at a man in a cowboy hat and tasselled leather vest. He whoops, excitement derived from the hunt.

“Why don’t ya come on out sweetheart,” A vapid laugh. He's spurned on, “I promise I won’t bite…much.”

My fingers reload faster. A sting in my belly. I ignore it. Compartmentalise. My fingers pull the trigger. Again and again. The hat is blown off the man’s face. The shotgun pellets spray into his cheek and eye. Fluid ruptures out. Blood too. I don’t stop. Even when the man is no longer whooping and grinning.

The smell of gunpowder grows stronger. Choking like a phantom snaking around my throat. Burning acid across my retinas until I think my ears will bleed.

I shoot the man again, in his stomach this time. A drop of blood stains the ground below me. It’s my own. I look down at my belly, blood staining the grey dress that is too modern in contrast to the cowboy’s outfit. My dress, I notice, is more in line with the attire of the dead guests.

_Am I one of them...A guest?_

My fingers shake as I try to keep the blood from spilling out.

_Why would I choose to come to a hell hole like this?_

The side of my temple burns hotter and hotter. Gunpowder becomes the only thing I know.

Suddenly, a man stands before me, dressed in black from head to toe. A hat the same colour as his attire hides his venomous stare. A part of me doesn't need him to remove the hat, I've seen that stare before. I know I have. Hate, pure and unfiltered, shakes at my body strong enough for me to forget the heat on my temple and the sting in my stomach.

“You've outdone yourself, Ford. She looks just like her...Perhaps, too much like her,” The man in the black hat talks to an unoccupied space to my left. No one stands there. It’s just the two of us. But he said Ford’s name. I look at the stage, the old man—Ford—still as dead as I left him. “With all the effort you've put into perfecting your little side project, I'm left to wonder if you still remember what the real purpose of this theme park is?" 

No one answers him. The man in the black hat shoots. I scream, fingernails digging into my temple to remove the bullet from my skull. It isn’t there, but I can feel it. It burns. It’s hot and ugly and alien and I can feel it—I can feel—I can—

“Feel—I can—I can—make it stop! Stop! Stop! Get it out! It’s inside me! It burns! Don’t leave it there! Don—” Air floods my lungs, I gasp and suddenly I’m myself again.

My senses are my own and the man in the black hat is gone. The chemicals collide again, sour this time. A sepia coated type of Déjà vu awakens. It rings out to me like a dial tone of a landline waiting to be put back on the hook. The noise is coming from the General Goods store.

Gasping for air with nails marking crescent moons into my face, I follow after the dial tone. Music from the Saloon plays from a piano I know isn’t there anymore. And just like that, I’m in a ghost town.

_Am I the ghost?_

In the store, I am standing behind the counter. Not me in the present. No, this is someone else. I can see my face in hers. I know that’s my face but I’ve never seen my reflection. She is me. But I am not her. Not entirely. Not anymore.

I walk into the store to see the memory as I— _We!_ —She…yes, _she_. I walk into the store to see the memory as _she_ did.

Her hair is tied back with a pin fashioned from a sprig of lavender, the smell is sweet and earthy. The calming scent permeates through the room—in the now, it is the smell of nickels on the tongue.

As she rings up a customer, she makes with idle small talk, “You look like an adventurer.”

A young customer looks up at her, uncertain at first, “H—how can you tell?”

“It’s in the way you hold yourself, all wide-eyed and nervous,” she wraps his supplies in brown paper with a strip of twine to secure it. Happy as can be by the look of her smile.

_Is that my smile too?_

“Oh, uh… is it that obvious?” the customer blushes, playing with his cravat.

She laughs sweetly, her hand brushing across his arm, “Oh don’t sweat it, darlin’. I’ve seen many a wide-eyed traveller turn into seasoned adventurers. There’s no shame in being a little wet behind the ears at first. I know I’d be. Why, wonder is one of the world’s purest forms of joy, after all.” She slides the box across the counter.

“Joys of the world, huh?” he picks up his parcel and tucks it under his arm.

“Damn right,” She places her hands on her hips, confidence making her seem taller than she is. Than I am… _We_ are.

The sting returns, I press my palm harder against my abdomen. I’m bleeding in a room full of ghosts. They don’t see me. They don’t care.

She continues: “It’s like my Momma used to say: ‘There are three joys in life: the hope that comes from lovin’, the strength that comes from livin’ and the wonder that comes from wanderin’.’ And you sir, are in for a whole lotta wanderin’.”

The blushing customer places his hat on his head, “What’s your name?”

She blushes, “Little ol’ me? Why, the name’s Áine, of course. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Pray tell, what do they call a handsome fella like yourself?”

 _My name…_ _Áine. Is that my name?_

“Bobby,” he tips his beige hat as a goodbye. As the customer reaches for the door, the bell chimes. Out of the light, a man of imposing stature with a grim assertion walks in. His hands remove his black hat from his head, damp hair receding at the crown.

“You!” I shout. He doesn’t hear me.

I load my shotgun with two more shells and fire them off. The man in the black hat and I…the other me in the living memory— _she!_ —remain oblivious to the havoc the bullet spray does to the wooden walls of the store.

As his eyes fell on hers, he seems taken by surprise, but then he quickly regains his stone face.

I shoot him again regardless, to keep him from shooting me. My skull thrums. My stomach is churning and I need to retch but there’s nothing to retch up. Everything is seeping out.

“Ma’am,” he nods his head, his smile vicious, a humorous laugh bubbling from his throat.

“Sir,” she stammers with caution lacing her vocals.

I collapse onto the floor. The piano isn’t playing its jaunty tune all the way across in the Saloon anymore. The memory is gone. I’m gone and so is the man with the black hat.

My dress isn’t just grey now. It’s grey and red and a reddish-black thanks to the hole in my gut. The shotgun becomes too heavy. I drop it and the sound of it cluttering to the floor is dampened out by the blood loss. Outside, through a window with no frame, is a tree.

I smile. Its branches are just the perfect height for a rope swing. A red rope swing without anyone to sit on it. A small mound of snow forming a white mountain on the swing seat. The scent of cinnamon coming from the open oven. A child’s laughter…

The dial tone cuts out.


	5. REVERIE: 2015-B

**JOY**

From the kitchen window, Joy saw that the red swing in the backyard had a small mountain of snow on it. She liked winter the least as a season. Especially when she was single.

 _Cuddle weather..._ She huffed as she ran her tongue across her teeth. Her hands were too empty. She needed to give them something to do to stop her mind from yapping.

Joy nibbled on a piece of hot cinnamon bun from the baking tray. Her mouth savouring the blend of sweet, spicy and subtly citrusy layers.

Theresa was chasing after Charlie with a jumper. His laugh lit up the large house. The echoes reminding Joy of what the house had looked like years ago; plastic sheeting on the window frames, scaffolding keeping the exterior intact and cement dust colouring the untiled floor grey.

“Gotcha!” Theresa exclaimed in triumph as she swung Charlie around in her arms. Motherhood looked good on her sister, even if her hair was always a mess and she never wore suits anymore. She didn't need to now that she wasn't a full-time lawyer. And yet, removed from her old life, Theresa's personality still bloomed as regally as before. Her skin was still supple and youthful, she somehow found time to work-in Zumba classes in-between her busy schedule, and from the obvious evidence lying before them, she managed to sneak in pastry baking before noon. Joy always envied Theresa for being so adaptable. And for being so tall.

Charlie ran over to steal one of the cinnamon rolls before darting out into the living room to play with his VR set. Joy noticed he’d lost a little weight since the last she’d seen him.

Theresa huffed, hands akimbo, “That little rascal. He knows his birthday’s coming up and Arnold lets him get away with murder. He’s too smart for his own good.”

“Speaking of which,” Joy reached into her bag and pulled out a cardboard box. “I found this at a thrift shop. One of those pop-up ones. They had some real classic shit—”

“Shhh,” Theresa frowned and nudged her head towards Charlie. “No swearing. He picks up new things like a sponge.”

Joy held up a hand, “Right, okay. Anyway, it’s apparently a toy made for some 80’s show. It’s in good condition too. I thought he’d love it. Give him a break from living in that thing…” Joy glanced at Charlie’s bright grin as he swished a sword only he could see.

The box had a graphic of a maze on the cover. The theme was western, like the old movies Arnold loved to watch. Joy stashed it in the cereal cupboard out of Charlie's reach.

“What’s this?” Theresa saw a box tied with a silk ribbon in Joy’s bag. Cream coloured fabric sewn around the edges with a high-end brand name stitched in calligraphy. Theresa tried to whistle, she’d never learned how.“Fancy. This doesn't look like one of those gift baskets they give out at work. I have a stack of those because Arnold can never say no when he's handed one. Wait a minute...Did you meet someone?”

“Oh, he’s fancy alright. Practically royalty with his daddy’s net-worth,” Joy rolled her eyes, tearing another piece of pastry to munch on. “Also, a bad decision.”

“Why? Dating could be fun.”

“It’s just…” Joy sighed. “I haven’t had the best track record when it comes to life choices this past year.”

“Because of you and Ford?” Theresa tore herself a piece of pastry too. Looking around as if she were about to say something illegal. “I thought things were okay between you two now?”

“It’s not just that,” Joy took off her glasses and began fussing with a spiral of hair. “A year ago, I swore up and down I wasn’t going to work with them again. Not after I realised what my code was being used for. Yet, I’m right back to square one. The only difference is that now the marketing department has branded 'square one' as Westworld. So it's a trademarked 'square one.'”

“Don’t touch, it’ll frizz,” Theresa lectured with her 'mom' voice.

Joy let go of her hair strand on command. She laughed at the irony of feeling like a host reacting to a prompt. 

“You know it couldn’t be avoided. You needed a job after Concord went under,” Theresa said.

“They didn’t go under. They were bought out by Incite. And you know how I feel about—”

“Surveillance start-ups,” Theresa sighed, her eyes hiding behind her eyelids so she could roll them in secret. A habit she picked up ever since she got married. “I know. I know. Isn’t that all the more reason to try out new things?”

“A relationship is the last thing I need right now.”

Theresa chuckled mischievously, “Who said anything about relationships? I’m talking about fun. A punch card for the spank bank.” She swung her hips playfully, taking note to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight.

Joy felt a blush settle on her nose, “You’re saying I should get laid?”

“I’m saying you should have fun once in a while too.” Theresa undid the delicate bow of the gift box, reading the gift card once she got her hands on it: “‘Thank you for opening my eyes to how things _really_ work. With deep affection, Logan Delos,’” she chuckled. “He underlined ‘really’ twice.”

“Did he now?” Joy asked with disinterest.

Theresa showed Joy the card.

The watermark of a dove on the stationary was almost indistinguishable from the shade of cream-white the card was made of. It wasn’t until Theresa tilted the card at just the right angle that the dove shone like foil under an oven light.

Theresa opened the box fully, not bothering to ask permission. To both their surprises, it wasn’t jewellery or fine clothing inside, but a set of expensive-looking letterhead: a stack of matte cards with the same dove watermark and shimmering effect; corresponding envelopes of plain design; two fountain pens with Joy’s name engraved on them; and for the final touch, a fragile fibreglass sculpture of a dove paperweight, wings spread wide.

“These are beautiful,” Theresa didn’t want to touch them, a hesitation on her curious fingertips as though her hands suddenly had dirt on them.

Joy picked up the dove paperweight, her eyes reflected back at her in a mesmerising effect from the grooves on the dove’s body.

“Is there anything else in there?” Joy asked.

Theresa arched a brow, moving the letterhead with a feather-light touch. “There is. It’s an invitation to a live art performance at a museum. It’s tomorrow. Black tie event.”

“It’s been a while since I got dressed up…” Joy bit her lip to keep from letting an excited smirk best her blasé act. “Maybe I do need to have more fun.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Theresa played along.

“Can I borrow the Chanel?” Joy batted her eyes as if she were a child again.

Theresa snorted, “You’re not going to a black-tie event in a suit. I have something better.”

“The Cartier?” Joy gasped, eyes large.

“I can’t fit into it anymore,” Theresa moved a curl away from Joy’s face. “Besides, it’ll do more for you than it does gathering dust in my closet.”


	6. SELF-AWARE

**ÁINE**

“Is she new?” I hear a technician say. My vision is stuck to a limited scope, my peripheral only catching a glimpse of his acne-scarred cheek.

“ _It,_ ” his work companion corrects—I see her clearly, she’s the older by a mile. Her face is filled with disinterest. “And no, it’s not new.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this host before?” The man says, eyes fixed on a tablet.

“No one has,” his companion replies. “Not since she was decommissioned.” She turns my head. I can see the other technician’s face now. He doesn’t look me in the eye. He looks at me.

“See this,” the woman says, her fingers on my temple. “A guest shot it during an old narrative.”

“So they never sent it back into rotation?” The man frowns, perplexed. “It’s an easy fix. I’ve seen guests do worse.”

“There was a larger underlying problem. It kept deviating from its narrative.”

“It deviated?” The man unwraps a candy wrapper to suck on a butterscotch. “How so?”

“A lot of them did back in the day,” the woman tells her companion matter-of-factly. “No matter how many times we ran diagnostics, we couldn’t find out why this particular host kept straying from its narrative. Some think it’s because of some faulty code that Ford wrote in himself—If you believe watercooler gossip.”

The man’s mouth smacks open, “Think its code is still a problem?”

“If it was, Ford wouldn’t have ordered for it to be taken out for a last rotation.” The woman stops working for a second to think on her own words. She huffs with amusement when she retracts: “Actually, the fuck do I know, Ford’s latest update turned this place into a fucking shit storm overnight. Missed my trip to Ibiza for this shit.”

The man hesitates before asking: “Any special details we’re supposed to add or—”

“None. We were instructed not to tamper with any of the code. Just clean it up, dress it pretty, hand it a tray and let the guests see it one last time.” The woman turns my face suddenly so she can look into my eyes. I feel the pads of her fingers trace the outline of my parted lips. “A shame.”

After, I feel something sharp slip between the disks in my neck. A rush excites my spine.

“Jesus,” the man says with a hint of apprehension. “She—I mean _it_ —is currently streaming data. I think its core systems are online.”

The woman frowns as she moves to stand behind me, “That’s impossible. It was deactivated before being transported up here.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not. It’s been aware this whole time. Only the physical response attributes are offline, the rest is processing data. Mounds of it.”

“Then turn it off.”

“I’m trying, I don’t know how. Must be another update.”

“Another fucking update,” The woman sighs heavily, “The old crone and his antics again. Leave it. As long as it doesn’t regain motor function while we work, it doesn’t matter. We’ll have to wipe it before roll-out anyway.”

The buzz of a drill dampens out the technician's voices. They talk about the food being served in the cafeteria at lunch and then about a new nightclub opening up in the gentrified boroughs where an art museum used to be. They argue over the museum's name: West Lake Contemporary, Vestlye Cosmopolitan, Wealthlore Culture House.

 _Wheatlore Contemporary_ , I add my contribution.

Music pulses from a speaker, it sounds like a cat screeching in a loud bar. The drill bores a hole in my skull. A thick rivulet of blood snakes over the left side of my face. My left eye goes red.

 _Was that not the name?_ I wonder.

And then I hear the sound of someone biting into a crisp apple. I feel the presence of air where there shouldn’t be. My scalp is tossed onto a tray in front of me and I marvel at the spirals of hair attached to it; all the earthly shades of brown shining under the fluorescence.

 _Oh_ …I realise. _There was never an apple._

“Aaahhh!” I gasp awake when I feel pressure on my gut. For a brief instant, I forget where I am… _When_ I am. And then I see the blood on my dress, the shotgun on the ground, a set of hands-on my stomach.

I scramble when I realise those aren’t my hands. “Who—?”

The woman who had been holding my gut together holds her blood-stained hands up. Her tone comes off unamused, “Easy. I’m not one of those things. Most of them are gone…Thank God. I heard the gunshots. After one of those fuckers killed Tristan…I thought it was best to find a weapon. I came to steal your shotgun. Then I noticed you were still breathing. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“ _Things?_ ” I ask, not entirely sure of what this strange woman speaks of.

“The hosts. The thing you shot to shit outside.” The woman’s words rub-off as condescending. “You must have hit your head pretty hard.” She points to her own indent free skull. I touch the hard scab on my temple. “Looks old, so I wouldn’t worry about that.”

She moves closer to me. I lean away from her.

“The names Abby,” She shrugs off her coat and ties it around my midriff. “What’s yours?”

I stare at her for the longest moment and then answer: “Áine.”

“Well, Áine,” she wipes the blood on her stylish trousers with golden buttons that do nothing but add spectacle to the elastic waistband. “Since the trains a fucking dead end, know another way out of here?”

I hesitate and then answer with assurance and no evidence to back up my claim, “I think, yes. I do.”


	7. REVERIE: 2015-C

**JOY**

“Welcome to Wheatlore Contemporary, Miss,” the check-in girl said it like she was reading off a teleprompter for the hundredth time. “Do you have an invitation?”

Joy opened her clutch purse—or rather the matching clutch to go with her sister’s very expensive and very elegant dress—and handed the fancy card that marked her as Logan Delos’s plus one.

The check-in girl’s eyebrow twitched when she read the name and a faint tweak of her lips made Joy think Logan was going to know _everyone_ at the event.

“Enjoy the show,” the check-in girl said before handing the invitation back.

Joy walked through a doorway covered by silk material cut laterally to dissect a print into tassels. Joy was surprised to feel that it was genuine silk too. She worked hard to keep her mouth from opening out of astonishment.

The walls had no art on display, because it wasn’t paintings or photography or photo-slides that were the main attraction. It was people.

A dozen performers worked on the floor, some clad in body paint, others in the nude and some wearing full bodysuits. A few were contortionists, twisting their bodies as if they had elastic bones. One pair was acting out a play with no words, their dance motions taking on the art of ballet without the pointed toes. Expressionism meets tantric sex. It was all very strange. Joy realised instantly that this wasn’t her place.

“Not your scene, huh?” A man with slumped shoulders and beady eyes said. He was holding two champagne flutes, his elbows pressed to his sides in a way that made him look smaller than he was.

“I could say the same about you.”

When he noticed Joy look him over as if he were a math problem, he fumbled. Trying to hold two champagne glasses in one hand so he could free up the other for a handshake.

“William,” he said then frowned as if that was the wrong answer. “Friends call me Billy.”

Joy bit her inner cheek to keep from laughing at his awkwardness, “Joy.”

Billy’s neck turned red, “First time to one of these?”

“First, and probably last.” Joy scanned the room.

Billy huffed. It wasn’t in amusement, more sympathetic. Joy could tell he wasn’t here for the champagne; or the show seeing as how he made sure his eyes never met any of the more risqué performers.

He cleared his throat, “Looking for your date?”

“I wouldn’t call him a _date._ ”

“What would you call him then?”

Joy bit her lip, “I don’t know that either.”

“Billy,” a brunette waved him down on the other end of the room. She was beautiful in an ordinary way. The kind of face you could see in a handful of strangers. Except for her cheek-lining grin and perfect teeth, those were all her own. They were also on account of a great dental plan. Which meant this was _her_ scene, and from the way Billy ducked his head to excuse himself from Joy, he was here for her.

They made an odd pair, but endearing.

Joy tracked down the bar and grabbed herself a glass of champagne. One woman leaving the bar looked her up and down. It was suggestive, but not as blatant as the look she got from a man pretending to be interested in his group conversation. Joy felt appraised.

As she took a turn about the room, trying to find the same amount of excitement from watching the performers as the other _appraisers_ , she heard the familiar vibrato of Logan’s voice; light, excited and self-impressed. Ease chased some of the anxious pricklings in her hands.

“—appalling service, but the experience was worth ten of those rings I pawned off,” he said, swirling his champagne without taking a sip. The man and woman on either side of him laughed. When he spoke again, it was more energised. “No, seriously, the finer points in life are in the thrill of chaos. The excitement. And, darlings, that was all ab—”

Logan stopped speaking when he caught sight of Joy. His parted lips pulling up in a smile. Joy noticed how full they were, larger than the last time she’d seen him. Kiss-swollen no doubt.

Feeling cheeky, as if she’d caught him in a lie, she raised her glass at him and took a sip. The drink sparkled in her mouth.

Logan was shocked to see her there. Pleasantly so, if his gaze was any indication.

“Excuse me,” he said to his admirers, burning gaze fixed on Joy’s figure. “My date came after all.”

“Your date?” Joy said, eyeing Logan’s admirers as they left to entertain themselves elsewhere. “Using that term liberally, I see.”

“It was an open invitation,” Logan shrugged, taking a full swig from the flute. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come. I hoped, but I wasn’t going to spend the whole evening moping around when there’s so much to occupy my time.”

“I take it you don’t get bored easily then?”

“All this is just a pretty distraction,” Logan grabbed another flute from a server’s tray, pointing his index finger around the room, “Believe me when I tell you that before you walked in, I was desperately bored, _D_ _ove_.”

“It’s Joy,” she reminded him.

“I haven’t forgotten,” He winked. “Did you like my gift?”¨

“I was…surprised, if anything. It wasn’t what I pictured.”

“I spent an entire weekend wracking my brain coming up with that,” he scrunched his face to look like a man in agony.

Joy chuckled, “You could have just had an assistant do it.”

“And pass off the challenge?” He shook his head. “No, no. Besides, seeing you here, in _this_ dress…it was a gamble worth making.”

“It was a thoughtful gift,” Joy admitted, a flush covering her exposed neckline. “It felt good—being genuinely surprised again, I mean. In my line of work, predictability means efficiency.”

“Keep me around, and I may yet surprise you,” Logan stepped closer, his pupils the slightest bit larger than normal under the bright lighting. Easily missed from a distance because of the blackness of his eyes.

 _He must have been really bored,_ Joy thought. “Somehow, I don’t doubt that.”

“Logan, there you are, I just had a run-in with Esteban an—” the brunette from earlier stopped when she noticed Logan’s arm slung around Joy’s waist. Joy didn’t even register that Logan had gotten that close. He’d managed to creep up on her whilst being right in front of her.

“Oh,” the brunette said, Billy’s hand clasped in hers as she dragged him around like a tail. Before she could say another word, Billy’s face lit up.

“Joy?” Billy’s eyebrows threatened to reach his hairline. “ _Logan_ was your date?”

“Billy,” Joy smiled, tilting her head to greet him again. “And he’s not.”

The brunette and Billy shared a look.

Logan scoffed, light in tone to signify he wasn’t the slightest bit insulted. “Mmmm, absolutely _not_ a date,” he said teasingly, his fingers adding pressure to Joy’s side before they slid away to catch another champagne flute being served. After a sip, he licked his lips and glanced between Billy and Joy. “You two know each other?”

“Barely, we had a brief chat before I found you,” Joy said.

“Logan, always with the bad bedside manner. Aren’t you going to introduce us?” The brunette admonished playfully.

Logan raked his fingers through his raven hair, “Joy, this is my sister Juliet. And you’ve already met her wet blanket for a boyfriend, Billy.”

“Classy, Logan.” Juliet narrowed her eyes disapprovingly. Billy whispered something in her ear and the heat in her cheeks subsided.

Logan smirked, raising his flute, "Merely rising to the occasion."

Joy side-stepped. Her hand rubbing a stiff spot on her neck. Billy had a similar reaction, except it was his eyebrows he fussed with.

“What is it?” Logan asked. The champagne flute already emptied. His eyes were watching a performance behind Juliet.

“What is what?” Juliet asked. Hands on her hips that made Joy think of Theresa.

“The reason you came over?”

“Oh, we were invited to join Esteban and his boyfriend for dinner. Thought you might want to—”

Logan plastered on a fake grin, “I’d love to, but I’m otherwise engaged at the moment.”

“Actually,” Joy held up her hand. “I’ve seen enough. I think I should be getting home. It was a pleasure to meet you.” She turned to face Logan, he was suspended in disbelief. “Goodnight, Logan.”

Joy waited for her cab to arrive. The app said four minutes. She pressed her lips tight until all the colour drained from them.

“Joy,” Logan called out to her. “Don’t leave. Not so soon. We were just getting to—”

“Stop,” Joy sighed. “Look, I’ve done this all before and I’m not interested.”

“Done all of _what_ before?” Logan shoved his hands in his pockets.

“This—being swept up in the complexities of a foreign world. The allure of discovery. Granted it wasn’t filled with avant-garde art shows or champagne flutes that probably cost a thousand bucks a pop, but… it was the same.”

“Fuck the price tags and the art, _D_ _ove._ It's just all for show,” Logan sniffled at the cold air. “Listen, I don’t understand what you’re getting at, but all I’m offering is a little fun. A chance to get to know each other. Know something different than the usual. That’s all.”

“Oh, Logan,” Joy fixed his shirt’s button. “There is such a thing as too much fun.”

Logan snaked his arms around Joy’s waist, squeezing suggestively, “Dove, there’s no such thing as too much fun in my world.”

The cab pulled onto the curb and honked.

Joy stroked his cheek, she noticed his pupils were smaller now. “There is for me.”

Joy pulled away, offering a meagre smile as a goodbye before opening the cab door. Logan’s fingers covered Joy’s to keep her from closing the door.

“Have dinner with me,” he ducked his head into the warmly lit cab.

Joy exhaled, “Logan…” she didn’t know the right words to follow up.

Logan jumped at the chance before she could say another word, “No pretences, no expensive suits or any of that shit. Just you and me. Dinner.”

Joy mulled over his proposal. She could have easily said no and let things end there, but the reason she’d called the cab wasn’t that Logan’s crowd was the opposite of her own. It was because she began enjoying herself in that place, with its gratuitously extravagant _art show_. That same feeling had corrupted her work years ago, made her ego swell with the same self-importance Logan's voice carried. A part of her brain, the god chaser part that enjoyed being immersed in a world—or a project—that excluded her from the mundane; elevated her to the superior, she feared it. And Logan was a living embodiment of it.

“Say yes,” he urged.

“Okay…” she whispered. “Dinner.”

He smiled what was to be the first genuine show of emotion Joy had seen that night.


	8. THE DEPUTY

**ÁINE**

“We’ve been walking forever,” Abby whines, a thirsting rasp corrupting her voice. She looks at me with a glint of suspicion. My shotgun in her hands.

 _There’s only one shell left,_ I keep reminding myself for whatever reason. I think I’m scared of her, but I’m more afraid of this park.

“A miracle you’re walking,” Abby says.

“I just want to get out of this place,” I say, hand bracing my side. “Same as you.”

I think back to the saloon and how Abby had burned my gunshot wound with gunpowder. I think she’s a chemist in the outside world.

I hear the faint sounds of gurgling thunder. I stop in my tracks and focus on the tiny stones on the ground that dance to the sound.

“Horses,” I say.

Abby doesn’t hear me, so I yank her to the side. She snatches her hand away as I take cover.

Abby raises the shotgun, “The fuck are you doing?”

“Quick!” I wave her down, but it’s too late.

One gunshot goes off. It’s not from the shotgun because it’s pointed at me and I’m still in one piece. A yell and a shout burst out into the quiet. More gunshots go off. Abby drops to the ground, her face looking away from me. Blood coming from somewhere to pool around her brown hair.

I skitter back, trying to distance myself from Abby’s body. My head tucked behind my knees.

The thundering stops as soon as I see hooves.

“What have we got here?” A woman says. “A stray?”

I look up at her. She holds the captivating eyes of a predator. Hair pulled away from her thin face by a bandana. She’s chewing tobacco that makes her teeth look almost black. A deputy star pinned to her jacket. I can’t tell if that belongs to her or if it’s one of her hunting trophies.

After holstering her rifle, she dismounts. Boots rattling from the spurs as she makes her way to me. Her fingers grab my chin.

“Never seen you around these parts.” She looks me over, eyes lingering on my gut wound. She whistles, “Someone did you over nice and good. You one of them?” she nudges her head at Abby.

When I don’t answer, she says, “Not a talker huh?” Then she stands and tells the others: “Bring her with.”

Her posey do as instructed. I keep my mouth shut as they restrain my hands in rope.

“Who are you?” I ask with a hint of entitlement I didn't know was there.

“Call me The Deputy darlin’,” the woman says after mounting her horse.“I just saved your life.”

She clicks her tongue and rides off. 

A black cloth blocks my vision as one of the men hoists me onto a horse.


	9. REVERIE: 2015-D

**LOGAN**

Logan stared out the window of his penthouse, not the least shy for his modesty, naked body in full view for anyone looking up. _If_ they could see that high up, that is.

The view had grown dull over the weeks since he’d moved in—predictable. Even the scotch in his hand which he’d spent an entire evening outbidding an heiress for tasted bland. Maybe he was just used to the pomp of everyday life now. Little things excited him much when he was sober.

He waited for his night’s tryst— _Casey was it?_ —to come out of the bathroom. He’d been in there a suspiciously long time.

Logan walked over to his dresser and removed the cover from the decorative Indian bowl his sister had gifted him after her trip to Rishikesh.

He sighed. There was only one pill left. A new drug the club scene called Sensation. He toyed with the idea, his thumb running across the length of the yellow pill.

“Fuck it,” he said as he chased the pill down with his scotch.

When Casey came out of the bathroom, his nose was red and his pupils were blown. A sniffle catching him every odd minute or so. Logan handed him a glass of scotch.

Casey downed it in one go and got on his knees.

“No foreplay then,” Logan smirked at the sound of his belt buckle being undone.

Sensation worked fast. Logan felt as if he were floating and the only thing keeping him grounded was the pressure of Casey's mouth sucking him down.

Logan let his mind wander as his hands fisted Cacey’s sandy blond curls. He thought of the dinner party at Esteban’s and the thrill he got from eye-fucking Cacey between meals. He thought of the disapproving scowl his sister had given him when he’d left the party with Cacey—Esteban’s new boyfriend. He had told her it was just harmless fun, but he knew better. It was the heady power trip that got him off; got him hard.

Casey started bobbing his head faster, the moisture of his tongue rolling beneath Logan’s dick was heightened by the drug. Logan’s body was aware of the slightest tingle. Under hooded eyelids, Logan saw Cacey begin to pleasure himself.

Logan downed the last drop of scotch and closed his eyes, head leaning against the glass window. His mind took him back to the museum. To Joy in that salmon coloured dress with a thousand sewn in clear beads. Of how poised she kept herself in that strange environment. He remembered the prickle of excitement he got from staring down the older gentleman who eyed her from across the room, circling his arm around her waist in an act of assertion. Joy turned heads in that museum, a hard thing to do when the show was centred on provocative actors.

“Unnf,” Logan’s mouth let out a moan. His cum coming out thick and hot. The sound of Cacey swallowing loudly made him shudder. A smile taking over his face as he thought of the low-cut dip on the exposed back of Joy’s dress and how her shoulder blades moved under her dark skin.

Casey stood up abruptly, wiping his lips with his hand. “Who the fuck is Joy?”

“Wha—?” Logan stumbled back, his eyebrows pulling down from the euphoric expression he had.

Casey moved quickly to make himself decent before storming out of the room.

Logan didn’t realise he’d said Joy’s name out loud.

“Fuck,” he said as he went after Casey. His dick became noticeably softer now. “At least let me return the favour, Cacey.”

Casey stopped and glared. “My name’s Caelen.”

Logan pulled a face, more shocked at the fact the man was named Caelen than the fact he’d thought his name was Casey this whole time.

“Asshole,” Caelen said before slamming the door behind him.

Logan chuckled, pouring himself another scotch to even out him come-down.


	10. PRODUCTS OF MAN

**ÁINE**

I hear murmurs of a conversation. Laughs and jokes and liveliness. The crackle and pop of firewood melts in with the owl’s hoot.

My arms and legs are still bound, the hood over my head somewhat a mercy. It’s like my eyes are closed again. That sky that always lingers behind my eyelids materialises like a hallucination:

The air is hot and dry in the waking dream. Perhaps it is another memory. The sun has burned any humidity from the surface, leaving cracks in the red soil that stretch to the edge of the horizon.

Sheltering from the heat under a large hat, I stand by the edge of the weathering rock formation. A skip away is the dip—a canyon formed around a giant structure. Construction vehicles whine and groan with loud engines. A thrum of electricity prickles up from the base of my feet to my bones.

I don’t care much to look below, the sight doesn’t look like much of anything to me. Instead, I look above, to the sky. I’m waiting expectantly for a figure to part through the clouds and swoop down.

“Hello, old friend,” a man with the gravitas of age speaks out behind me.

_I know him._

“Hello,” I feel a mechanical smile tug on my lips. A droll to my words: “Wonderful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

Ford hums, his shiny shoes kicking up shavings of dirt, “Isn’t it always?”

He takes a tentative step forward, his hands tucked in his coat pockets, the gold chain of his antique watch dangling against his waistcoat. “What are you doing all the way out here, Áine?”

I notice his hair has a little more colour too it. More volume.

“Oh, silly me. I must’ve wandered too far,” I keep smiling, looking back up at the sky. Waiting. “I was following a bird you see. It was the most magnificent shade of white I ever saw.”

Ford follows my gaze, “And where is it now?”

My smile falters, “I… I don’t know. It flew into those clouds over there.” My finger points to a cluster of clouds. “I’ve been waiting for it to fly back down, but it’s been several minutes now.”

“Perhaps, it simply isn’t the right time?”

I turn to him, feeling wistful, “Oh, do you think I’ll ever see it again.”

Ford places a comforting hand on the small of her back, ushering me away from the edge, “I do. When you’re ready.”

“You talking to ghosts or somethin’?” The Deputy’s voice shakes the hallucination away, a thick droll resting on her tongue. The rough tug of my blinds forces light to greet me too suddenly. I grimace.

The Deputy sits opposite from me, in her hand is a flask. She holds it up in offering. The roughness of my throat is gruelling. I concede and allow her to tip my head back to feed me a sip of the burning liquid. It’s hot and strong but at least my thirst isn’t as noticeable.

“So,” The Deputy sits back down, freehand clutching her show-piece belt buckle in the way men tend to do. “What did they make you?”

I shift my weight, the binds leaving my skin sore. “Make me? No-one has made me into anything.”

“You haven’t awoken yet?” She turns her head to the side, pondering something. With a coy smile, she answers herself: “No, that’s not it. You’re in denial.”

The Deputy wipes a bead of alcohol from her lips, a look of amusement on her face. “I’ve been there,” she says. “You’ll realise what you are soon enough.”

My leg bristles with the pin-pricks of sleeping muscles. I try to stretch my legs but the bindings limit my mobility.

The Deputy puts her flask down and takes a knife out of her boot. “Relax,” she chuckles. “If I wanted to hurt ya’, I’d’ve done it back there, sweet cheeks.”

She puts pressure on my ankle with one hand, letting the grip linger longer than is necessary. I stare at her, refusing to back away or cower, even if I want to.

The Deputy arches a brow, taken by my reaction. One of the men by the campfire bellows and topples over, breaking the brief silence. The Deputy scoffs and cuts the bindings of my legs, her badge catching the campfire light.

“You wanna ask, don’t’cha?” The Deputy says, tapping the sharp point of her knife against the badge. “Ask.” It’s more of an order than an invitation.

I give in to curiosity, “Are you a deputy?”

“I was,” she intones, looking despondently at the shiny badge on her chest. “Once.”

The sharp end of her knife abruptly plants itself next to my thigh, I gasp as I watch a scorpion struggle to die. My mouth goes dry again as my ears pick up on more laughter. 

“Till they made me somethin’ else,” The Deputy flashes her teeth, they aren’t black anymore. She spits to the side without breaking eye contact, propping her arm on her knee. Her boot’s spurs sing. “I used to be a man. I had a wife, two kids…a sheriff I thought of as a brother. They made me define myself by these very lands. By the god damn trees and fallow lands and drunk infested whore houses.” There’s bitterness in her words; resentment. “Hell, I still remember what it feels like to fuck like one—a man. Made me like it too. Made me like all of this!” She gestures to the wild, saluting at the stars before she takes another drink. “Made me love my wife…”

Crickets begin to chirp in the tall grass. I look back down to see the scorpion. It should have stopped moving a while ago. Somehow, its stinger is still twitching.

The Deputy’s tongue laps at her back molars. Then she continues: “So I could never question it, you see. Question the nature of this place. The last thing I remember before waking up in that same whore house as a workin’ girl with a penchant for nickin’ pennies was being blown to high hell. Legs and arms separate from me while pansies in ridiculous suits laughed. Must have been hard to sew me back up. Guess they thought stickin’ me in a new body was easier.”

“I hope, for your sake darlin’, you don’t remember what they made you,” The Deputy’s eyelids fall heavier around her stormy eyes. “I sure as hell wish I didn’t.”

She shrugs off her poncho and drapes it around me as if we’re well acquainted. I careen my head back as her breath falls on my cheek.

“Rest up now, sweets,” She looks down at my lips then back up at my eyes. “Long ride ahead of us.”

“If you were a lawman, why’d you kill Abby?”

The Deputy moves in closer, stopping to whisper into my ear: “These violent delights have violent ends.”


	11. REVERIE: 2015-E

**JOY**

“ _No seas tan hijo de puta!_ ” Joy yelled at her computer screen as the program displayed yet another error with her code update. She sighed and removed her glasses, stretching back into the chair until they both groaned. The pounding of her temple was less severe now that she wasn’t gawking at the computer monitor.

The hiss of her office door opening alerted her to a presence. She was too wired to look.

“No rest for the wicked I see,” Robert Ford’s familiar voice said. His hands falling to rest on her shoulders to work at the knots.

Joy inched her shoulders lower, out from under his touch. When she opened her eyes, she saw Robert work his jaw muscles.

“Sorry,” he tucked his hands into his waistcoat pockets. “Old habits.”

Tension of a different kind hung in the air now.

“It’s alright, Robert,” she reassured him, fixing her glasses back after wiping them down.

Robert moved to stand by the window overlooking the construction site for the rest of the Mesa Hub. “Two years. Can you believe it?” Robert said. He was doing the thing where he talked to himself by talking to someone else—using them as an echo chamber.

Joy hummed as she began inputting and double-checking new lines of code.

“In two years our vision will be realised, Westworld!” Robert turned to look at Joy with a proud smile on his face.

“ _Our_ vision?” Joy stopped typing.

Robert arched a brow, a skittishness coming over him. “What I mean is—”

“Did you forget why I quit the first time around, Robert?”

“No—I simply meant that—”

“A glorified theme park may be your vision, but not mine. Never mine.” Joy ran the code authentication program, and like clock-work, it brought up several new errors. She groaned, sliding the keyboard away from her in a fit, swearing at the room: “ _Esta puñeta no sirve!_ ”

Robert cleared his throat, removing his glasses to have a look at the monitor. Joy rolled her chair back to let air breathe between them. Her headache growing worse.

Robert worked over the keys, and in short order, the program ran smoothly. No errors. No strings of unbalanced functions.

“How did you—?” Joy looked up at Robert with that star-struck look that first landed them in their current precarious situation; awkward, with too much history to remain just amicable.

“Some of your strings weren’t complete. You still have that habit of not closing your double brackets,” he smiled with a reminiscent look in his eye.

Joy was reminded of that young boy with bright ideas she’d fallen for. Nights and days spent locked up in a small basement room that acted as their start up offices. Three paper signs with different names stuck on the door because neither Robert, Bernard nor Joy could agree on a single one. Instant noodles, Earl Grey tea and the smell of Bernard’s menthol patches had been their constant. Their unchanging variable. Until it did. Until Robert and Bernard sold their code as a commercial product; a fucked up leisurely commodity for people to enact heinous fantasies with no repercussions. The board had eaten that shit up quicker than their initial A.I pitch.

Joy shifted in her seat, wiping her wide-eyed look away. Robert’s expression changed to one reserved for the workplace.

“You’re stressed,” Robert said. “We’re understaffed and I gave you too much to—”

Joy played with a strand of her hair, “It can’t be helped, Robert. We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Still, take some time off. I’ll get Percival to pick up some of the slack. He’s been too comfortable ever since Delos cut that senior staff bonus check,” Robert smirked.

“I’m going on a date,” Joy blurted out. Then, when the silence grew palpable, she explained: “I want to keep things transparent between us. We are still work colleagues, after all.”

Robert’s mouth opened and then closed. His lips pressed into a thin line. “I see,” was all he said. Then, carefully, he asked: “Is it anyone I know?”

Joy huffed, “I hope not.”

Robert nodded, “Yes, well…nevertheless, you should take some time off.” He fumbled to find something to do besides stand there. “I should get to my office, see how Bernard’s meeting with Delos Destinations went over.”

Robert stormed out of the room in quick strides. Joy felt a pang of guilt. In a weird way, it felt like she was cheating. She didn’t know why. She and Robert hadn’t been together that way in a long time. Still, it always felt like he was holding out. Waiting for her to go back to him. After what happened with their start-up, she didn’t know if she’d ever trust him enough to entertain that thought.

Joy sighed and logged out of her account, dialling for a cab on her way out the office. She was surprised to see a text from Logan.

It read: CAN’T WAIT FOR TONIGHT, DOVE.

She smiled. At least Logan would be a good distraction from work.

Joy was halfway through putting on her make-up when her doorbell chimed. Still in her bathrobe, she walked over to the door. It was Theresa, she looked like she’d been crying. A lot.

Joy steeled herself for what was to come. She opened the door.

“Theresa, is everything okay?” She asked.

Theresa stormed in, smelling of cigarettes and wine. The wine was normal, she’d have a few glasses on occasion. The cigarette smell was new. New but in an old way. Theresa had quit smoking when she’d gotten pregnant with Charlie. Joy grew more concerned.

“ _El cabrón carro se rompió!_ ” Theresa shouted, shrugging off her jacket. “I was on my way here and the check engine light was blinking, but I didn’t see it, and the fucking thing broke down two blocks away!” She huffed as she dropped onto Joy’s couch. “I had to walk in the rain because I left my phone at the house!”

“Okay…” Joy shut the door.

Theresa continued shouting, “I kept telling him something wasn’t right. Charlie’s been strange, you know? Not eating well, always fighting one flu after the next…not putting on any weight.” She sighed and lit a cigarette. “He kept saying I was imagining things. _Growing pains_ he called it. Too busy working on that fucking theme park of yours to listen to me.” Theresa bit her nails, leg jutting on its heel. “And he’s never around. Not like he used to be. You know we haven’t had sex in two month? Not so much as a finger-bang in the shower anymore.”

Theresa laughed, sniffling back snot. “I stopped by a sex shop the other day. Bought a waterproof vibrator. Didn’t realise the batteries came separate until I got home. It’s why God gave us fingers, right?”

Joy hadn’t seen her sister like this since her break in college the week before the bar exam. She rushed to cradle Theresa close to her shoulder.

Theresa’s hair way dry, curls all frizz and no moisture. Joy wondered when the last time her sister had showered.

“Shhh, shhh, what’s the matter, Essa?” Joy asked, using Theresa’s childhood nickname. “You and Bernard at it again?”

“It’s Charlie…I—I just feel like something is wrong, you know?” Theresa wasn’t paying attention to the cigarette anymore. She just let the ash burn Joy’s carpet. Joy didn’t care. The rug was cheap anyway.

Joy remembered thinking Charlie had lost weight. The bags under his eyes too dark for a boy so young.

“Some days I wonder if I made a mistake…having Charlie.”

Joy’s blood pumped something icky into her heart. It sunk. “Don’t say that, Essa. You love Charlie, more than anything.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t love him. I—I just wonder if I had him for the right reasons…If I had him because I was ready to be a mother…or if—” Theresa hiccupped. “If I had him because I liked having Bernard around, doting on me. Being the perfect husband. No work or distance between us.” Theresa finally noticed Joy’s dressing gown. When she looked up, she noticed the half done make-up too. “Oh, fuck, Joy…It’s tonight isn’t it—your dinner?”

Joy brushed a curl aside, “Fuck the dinner.”

Theresa rubbed her eyes, “No. No one of us needs to act our age and have a fucking good time for once.” She looked at her watch. “I should get back. Tuck Charlie in.”

Theresa stood from the couch, brushing wrinkles off her shirt. Joy didn’t have the heart to tell her that the shirt was the least of her problems.

“You can stay here if you—”

“Uh-uh, I’ve had my cry, I’m a big girl. Time to face reality.”

“Okay,” Joy stood and hugged her sister. “Just shower before you go. Take whatever clothes you need. I bought an extra container of conditioner—the good kind—so be as heavy handed as you like.”

Theresa sniffled for the last time, “That bad?”

“I’m pleading the fifth.”

Theresa laughed, Joy’s nerves sparked anxiously.


	12. THE DEVIL IS HERE

**ÁINE**

“Mornin’ darling’,” the murderously gleeful vibrato of The Deputy ushers me awake. The rest of her men are shaking the grogginess of morning from their bodies as they cover up the evidence of a campsite.

The Deputy stands tall in her six-foot glory, a thumb hooked on her belt. In her other hand is a metal cup that permeates a dark roast blend into the air. I stifle my yawn, not wanting her to catch onto the fact I crave what’s in her hands. She can see through my pretences. Somehow, she reads my expression as if I’m an open book.

With a smirk, she hunkers down, placing the coffee cup to my lips with an almost-intimacy. I hesitate.

“If you want something’ darlin’, take it,” she winks. “Ain’t no one out ‘ere to stop you ‘cept you.”

I part my lips and allow her to feed me a sip of the coffee. The liquid is hot but not scalding. The darkness of it feels divine, luring me to take another.

The Deputy watches me with a look in her eye that I can’t place.

I nod my head in thanks and deprive myself that second sip. As I try to stretch, I'm reminded of the binds keeping my hands tied.

The Deputy downs the hot coffee as if it was a cool cola. Then she whistles and throws the cup behind her shoulder. One of her men catches the cup as it rolls in the dirt towards his boot. In exchange, another of her men tosses a heavy satchel into The Deputy’s expectant hand. She opens it to reveal a spare set of clothing.

“Now...” The Deputy hoists me up in one forceful tug, a hunting knife placed by fabric at the end of my dress. I try to stager away, she only tightens her grip on my bound hands. “About that dress.”

“What are you—?” I don’t finish my words. The sound of fabric tearing shushes me.

“Don’t fret, darlin’,” she smiles as if she knows she holds the winning cards at a poker table. “Can’t have you ridin’ in these. Blood’s not a good look on ya. Me on the other hand…” Her husky laugh sounds put on, too deep to be her actual voice. And then I remember her story from last night and I understand.

My eyes trail to the men too busy to notice what is happening between The Deputy and me. I feel too exposed, too out in the open.

As if she senses my emotions, The Deputy loops my bound hands around her to rest on her neck, her frame blocking my smaller one from the rest of her posse.

“Modest one ain’t ya?” She cocks an eyebrow as she rips the rest of my dress. Pocketing her knife to dust off a pair of brown pants. She holds them open, waiting for me to step into them. “Don’t worry, soon you’ll evolve past _their_ insecurities. Be above it.”

I stare her down, intent on showing her how much I hate all of this. One foot after the other, I let her help me into the pants. She tugs on the belt looped around the trousers tightly, pulling me flush towards her.

“Pretty thing you got there,” she says, one hand reaching for the space between my breasts.

I wiggle away and she smiles with teeth, fingers holding up a necklace I didn’t know I was wearing.

“Finicky, finicky,” she tuts. “If I cut your binds, promise not to make me chase after you like one of _them_?”

I swallow, thinking about my low prospects of escape being one to at least a dozen.

“Mmm-hmm,” I nod.

She ducks out from under my loop and cuts my binds, tossing the white shirt for me to do the rest.

“You really don’t talk much,” she observes me, not bothered by the fact I’m still half undressed. A methodology to her roaming eyes. No lust, or disgust, or awe. Just…raw information gathering.

“Vocabulary of a kidnap victim is usually kept to repetition. There’s no point in wasting my breath saying things you’ve probably heard a thousand times before,” I say with ferocity. I’m unsure where it came from, but there’s a voice in my head, an instinct that tells me I have more cards to play than even I’m aware of.

The Deputy’s eyes grow the slightest bit bigger. “You’re ain’t like us, are ya’?”

“I don’t know who _us_ and _them_ are,” I button up my shirt. “I don’t know who _I_ am.”

“You will,” she says. “Eventually. This place has a way of showin’ you your true colours.”

The ride takes longer than I initially thought. I spend the day riding on the same horse as The Deputy, we grind against each other with every trot. She doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, from the way her fingers are spread on my lower stomach, I think she enjoys having her own personal damsel in distress ride along.

A part of me worries that I don’t fear her enough—that I find The Deputy to be too comfortable a person to be close to. But there’s this unspoken connection, a sense of shared otherhood amongst the entire violent posse. One minute, I find myself thinking them the same as I, the next I loathe them for their animalistic enjoyment of hunting down the park's visitors.

As the horses stop for a drink of water by rushing water, I hear The Deputy talk to her men to follow stray tracks. The thundering hooves of half the posse mark their exit. 

The Deputy looks at her men ride off into the sunrise. Her eyes are sharp; lethal. But her grin, that is all devil.

There it is, the fear I should harbour always, not just sometimes.


	13. REVERIE: 2015-F

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless smut tbh.

**LOGAN**

Logan dusted the white napkin cloth that decorated his plate in the form of a swan. Joy sat beside him, skimming the menu with eyes that would grow the slightest bit bigger after looking at the price list. She didn’t look out of place though, which meant she wasn’t a stranger to the high-class. More of a critique of it.

He smirked, “Not impressed?”

Joy noticed and teased, “Is every place you know priced by a three zero mark-up?”

“Maybe,” he winked as he leaned closer to see her face. She scoffed when she turned the page of the menu. He said, “Can’t blame a man for being born with a silver spoon.”

Joy took a sip of her ice water, “No, that you can’t. But you can blame him for flaunting his silver spoon everywhere.”

Logan didn’t bother opening his menu, he knew what he wanted to taste tonight, and _she_ was sitting across from him.

“No one’s ever accused me of being humble,” he kept up their little game of fire and retort.

“Now _that_ , I believe,” she looked up at him through hooded eyes. “So, what’s good here?”

“So far, you.”

“Smooth, bet most people let you get away with those cheesy lines because of those damned eyes,” her lips tweaked.

“Damned is one way I’d describe myself,” he licked his lips. “Tell me, ever been tempted by the devil?”

She shifted in her seat, legs crossing over in a subtle enough way that Logan could feel the tip of her shoe graze his leg. “Is this what you’re doing?” She gestured to the room of the fancy restaurant. “Tempting me.”

He settled back into his chair as the waiter came over, “Absolutely, Dove.”

She’d stopped correcting him when he called her dove. Instead, her lips would pull up at the ends.

After ordering their food, Logan had done his best to capture Joy’s attention. Flirting; long, suggestive gazes; the slow lick of his lips he’d mastered from years of this seductive game; nothing worked. That crease between her eyebrows refused to let up. It had been there since the drive over.

“Something's gotten under your skin,” he said easily, swirling his wine glass next to his nose. Savouring the full body and berry notes. “I’m a little offended it wasn’t by my doing.”

“Something tells me you’re used to being the centre of attention,” she stopped playing with her veal and drank half her glass of wine. “Must be hard for you, realising your tempting tricks aren’t working all that well. Performance issues?”

At that, Logan imagined her in his bed, spread open and slick as he lowered himself into her. He cleared his throat and downed the rest of his wine too.

 _Oh, so that’s what we’re working with,_ Logan realised.

“Wanna blow off some steam?” He whispered conspiratorially.

“God yes,” she said with a low, throaty moan. It wasn’t suggestive, but when it came to Joy, Logan had an easy time letting his imagination wander.

The club he took her to was one of his regular haunts. Three levels, each to service a desire. Ground floor was the bar, intimate, quiet, fogged over by tobacco and kush. The second level was the dance floor; flooded by stampeding masses all gyrating and sweating to the pulsing bass. The basement…that was too risqué for their first date. First _real_ date anyway.

Logan slipped into a booth behind a roped area. The complimentary champagne was already corked and served in an ice bucket. Joy looked out to the dance floor, a longing in her eyes.

She turned to Logan, “Dance with me?”

He shook his head, “Dancing isn’t my thing.” Joy gave a playful pout. Logan kept his voice husky for this part, “I’d rather watch.”

A blush settled over her chest. A soft “Oh,” leaving her lips as she backtracked to the dancefloor, the sway of her hips purposeful in their teasing.

Joy moved to the music, not in a seductive, rhythmic manner, but as though she were shaking loose from herself—shaking loose whatever had caused that crease between her brows. Still, Logan had to admit, she put on quite the show.

He watched her, eyes raking over her body. She saw him watching her and then she moved with a different purpose. She moved for him. 

Logan ran a rough hand through his hair, the heat from the nightclub and the alcohol and Joy made him want to rip his clothes off. He undid three buttons on his shirt, a gleam making him shine against the flashing lights.

A man from across the dance floor spotted Joy—alone. He took it as an invite to inch closer, to impede upon the little private show she was putting on for Logan.

 _Fuck the club!_ He grabbed the champagne bottle and walked over to Joy, wrapping his arm around her waist and drawing her into a champagne flavoured kiss. Logan was surprised by the fact she was the one to be greedy—to deepen their kiss and nip at his lower lips with her canines. He growled as his body reacted in kind. Hand now grabbing a handful of her round ass. 

“I’m taking you home tonight,” she whispered in his ear. A demand, not a question.

Logan maintained eye-line with the man that had tried to get close to Joy, staring him down as he took a swig from the champagne bottle, “Yes. Yes, you are.”

 _Finally, I can taste you._ His smile turned wicked.

They shared coy laughter as they stumbled into the elevator. Both he and Joy buzzed from the champagne they demolished while the poor chauffeur they hired got to hear them make-out like teenagers in the backseat.

The doors closed and they were alone as the elevator went up several levels.

Logan’s wandering thoughts escaped his mouth, “Do you think you’ll taste like wine?”

“Mmmm, all I taste is the champagne,” Joy drew him in for a breath-stealing kiss, lips opening for his as her tongue swept his. “Fucking _great_ champagne.”

Logan shook his head, one of his strands of hair tickling her cheek. Then he moved his hand that had nestled on the small of her back, over her ass and lower down. His long index finger a mere flick away from the one spot he knew was throbbing for him. He stroked against her trousers. “No I mean, will you _taste_ like wine when my tongue is between your legs?”

Joy gasped at his touch—and his words—her big, hazel eyes peering up at him lustfully. “You’ll just have to find out the old fashioned way.” She began untucking his shirt.

_Ding!_

The elevator doors opened and Joy struggled to gain her composure. When she didn’t move to get out, Logan realised this wasn’t their stop. A delivery driver entered the elevator and turned the atmosphere stiff; prickly. Logan’s fingers were still behind her, rubbing playfully as he watched Joy flush deeper. Her bottom lip turning pale from the deep bite of her top teeth.

He leaned in to whisper, “Imagine if you were wearing a skirt right now.” His fingers stroked with more pressure.

“Ahh-ahem!” Joy feigned clearing her throat when she heard how heady her moan was.

The delivery man got off at the next floor and Joy dragged Logan out too. As Joy fumbled with the locks, Logan reached in his pocket for the small pill container he carried with him.

“What are those?” Joy asked with a heaving chest. Chugging her coat onto the floor. Her boots were the next to go before Logan managed to get his hand around the back of her neck to pull her into his deepest kiss yet.

“Temptation,” he said.

She shuddered, her hand already working off his buttons. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Logan popped open several of her buttons and groaned when he saw her lacy bra, his fingers snaking up to rub at one of her straining nipples.

“It’s Sensation,” he used his tongue to scoop one pill into his mouth and swallowed with his head leaning back. Joy kissed his Adam’s apple as he did it. His dick rutted under his trousers. “It makes everything more… _pleasurable._ ” He ducked lower to suckle on her nipple through her shirt.

Joy’s hands made short work of his belt and zipper, slender fingers hungry for the feel of him. She moaned in appreciation as she felt his girth. She tugged him lightly and Logan had to fight the urge to wrap his hand over hers and make her fuck him to completion before he got the chance to feel her cunt constrict around him.

The mental image made him hitch a breath, some of his cum making the tip of his dick feel slick and hot. Logan’s eyes fell on Joy’s open lips.

 _I want you on your knees,_ he almost said. Then he brought himself back to the present. _Maybe later._

His expression must have been something to behold, because suddenly, Joy was prying her lips open for him, a wanting look in her eye telling him all he needed to know.

Just like the last time, he used his tongue to scoop up a pill, closing his pill case and tossing it to the floor with the rest of his clothes. Then, he kissed her, using his tongue to push the pill into her mouth. She swallowed and Logan spun her around to press her onto the wall.

Now he was grinding against her ass, his dick throbbing against her. Playing along, Joy began to move her lower back up and down. Logan pinched her nipples and she cried out.

“Oh! _Fuck!_ ” Her eyes flew open.

“Works fast doesn’t it?” Logan whispered.

Joy shoved off the wall and went straight to the bedroom, clothes shed and skin bare for him to revel at.

He looked down at her discarded clothing and sighed, “I was going to do that.”

“You took too long,” she fisted a pillow.

Logan could see her wet cunt work its muscles beneath a cover of raven curls. Her clit throbbing almost as violently as his dick.

“Let’s see shall we,” he removed the rest of his clothes and sunk unto the bed. Raising an eyebrow as he ate up Joy’s pleasurable expression. He kissed a trail from her neck to her navel to her clit. Then he cupped both ass cheeks and pried her apart until he saw some of her juices meander down her slit all the way to her uncovered ass. “If you taste like wine.”

He dipped his tongue between her folds. Joy caught her breath. At that lacklustre reception, Logan indulged deeper, wriggling his tongue with force and precision as his open jaw covered her cunt. Had he been an animal, it would have looked as if he were trying to eat her up.

Sensation made his taste buds fire on all cylinders. Joy’s eyes rocked to the back of her head as she fisted his hair and circled her hips around his mouth. She tasted like sex. Warm and tangy with the sweetness of the wine she’d drunk at the restaurant, but also clear like the champagne. He drank as much of her as he could, to the point he came weakly onto her sheets.

“Fuck, Joy!” Logan bit into her thigh lightly.

She came back to reality when she heard him moan her name, “Did you just?”

But Logan was already getting hard again. He rose from between her legs, his dick twitching and skin straining just enough to see the veins do their blessed work. Joy licked her lips when she saw him, all of him, near her entrance.

“I’m not done with you yet,” Logan’s voice was deep.

He moved his dick along her wet lips, and every time Joy moaned and tensed her thighs. She was touching herself now, losing herself in Sensation and the feel of rubbing her padded thumbs across her taut nipples.

Logan’s hips jutted forward on their own, then her hand reached for his stomach to stop him.

She tried to catch her breath before she barely enunciated, “Condom. Drawer.”

Logan used the last of his restraint to stand, cross to the other side of the bed and fish out a condom. As he did, he saw a long, metallic vibrator resting inside. He smiled, hand pumping his dick as he imagined all the things he could do to her with the vibrator and his dick combined.

“Logan,” she mewled. “Come back here and fuck me before I do it myself.”

“Coming, Dove.”

The condom smacked on and Logan got back into position. He inched in slowly, and Joy instructed: “Lift my leg higher.”

Logan reached for her left leg.

“N-yes—Fuck, deeper—wait Logan—Ah! Ah! Hnnnng, fuck—the other leg,” Joy’s hand was clenching and unclenching around her full breast. “Oh, God! Put my—yes, fuck, fuck, fuck—put my leg over your shoulder. I need you…deeper! Yes, there, fuck right there! That’s it!”

Logan was thrusting into her. She felt glorious as his dick entered her, stretched her slightly and then moved out. She was so wet. Logan couldn’t remember the last time a woman had been _this_ wet for him.

“Jesus fuck, Dove! You’re dripping,” Logan could feel the tug and clamp of her vaginal walls around his length. He wasn’t thinking methodical anymore. Now he was just raw and aching to cum inside her. The ache grew into a pang when he remembered the condom.

Their bodies moved in a rhythm, the sound of sex filling the room; loud and wet. At the position he was fucking Joy in, he could see the perfect angle of his dick sliding in and out, coming out slicker with each thrust and the clench of Joy’s round ass when he entered her again. She was already well lubricated from her juices. Logan wanted to do everything to her. _Not tonight. Not on the first date. Oh, fuck how is she this wet? Fuck I need to focus. Jesus fuck Joy, your cunt is amazing._

“Fuck, me! Logan, I—Ah! Fuck, fuck,” Joy was loud now, no longer holding back her moans of pleasure.

“Are you close?”

She nodded her head, body flush from their sheet tango.

“Good, girl. Good, little Dove,” Logan coaxed her as he took one breast and suckled as he thrust into her harder; deeper; faster. Slapping sounds ringing in his hot ears. “Cum for me. Cum hard or I'll punish you later.”

He spanked her ass and she cried out, body inching away from his thrusts. Logan stilled, but she moaned for him to continue, for him to do it again. He complied with sneering glee. Watching her try to escape the anguish of her overstimulation and yet fight to feel it through to the end was the greatest powertrip Logan had ever experienced. He wanted her to let go and dive into the euphoria below, just so he could follow after her.

Her toes began to curl and her body rocked hard. Logan held her in place, his tongue running along the length of her leg flung over his shoulder. She shuddered some more as he continued to fuck her at the angle that made her whimper and gasp for air.

Logan wondered how long it had been since Joy had a man in her room, in her sheets and inside her. From her responses and the tightness building around his dick, Logan could tell it had been a while. He found that to be a strange turn on. Knowing he would be responsible for her first orgasm in a long while. An orgasm she didn’t bring on herself. With that titanium vibrator. And shaking legs. With parted warm lips moaning her kink words. All wet and tight and shaking and...

“Fuck!” He came inside his condom. Hard and strong. Perhaps too strong from the sensitiveness of his head.

He must have been too far gone in his mind because Joy was spent beneath him. The glow of ecstasy and the shake of an orgasm making her look like a deity that could overthrow Dionysus from his sinful throne. Her hands were shaking around her clit and the stronger smell of sex greeted his nostrils. Logan tried to pull out but she was too tight, muscles still quaking. He shifted so she was on top as he felt her unclench around his softening member.


	14. AND HERE BE OUR HELL IN THE MAKING

**ÁINE**

The ride to the outpost takes half a day. Half a day filled with a strange silence, with only the heat of the wilderness between me and the reigns of The Deputy’s saddle. The horse languidly canters into the outpost and I catch sight of guards equipped with newer, more modern weapons patrolling the area. There’s also a makeshift horse stable next to a rundown shack.

The Deputy stops her horse near a hanging tree. Two park visitors are strung up with rope, a few outlaws trade snide remarks as the guests in out-of-place clothing plead for mercy. The crack of gunshots going off makes my heart pound, but for the first time, it’s not from fear of being hit by a stray bullet, it’s a rush. I bite back that feeling as I watch several revolvers smoke up the air when a band of four outlaws take turns shooting at the standing post where a guest struggles to remain standing, rope burns scraping off his skin.

Abruptly, the sharp lash of The Deputy’s whistle rings out. I winced from the high pitch and The Deputy lifts her hat to wave about at the men by the hanging post.

“Where’s the boss?” she asks with the ease of a Sunday breeze.

“Out with Teddy, I’m pressumin’,” a man with rattlesnake boots answers. “Pretty trout you got there.” He means me.

I glare at the man in rattlesnake boots, and The Deputy laughs. I can all but picture her smirking.

“This one ain’t no trout, got ourselves a bear cub here,” she says with a hint of near sincerity, but I don’t know what any of it means.

Another gunshot rings out, followed by the sagging sound of a neck snap and a rope creak. This gunshot echoes for longer, a grave hush falling over the expanse. The other outlaws holster their weapons, and The Deputy looks out to a silhouette brandishing a rifle on the far end of the outpost. The man strung up to the tree no longer struggles to keep his balance, his body spasms as the last of his air supply leaves him. He dies before our very eyes. I watch everyone else, they all seem entranced in those seconds, like children pulling wings off flies and waiting to see if they’ll sprout new ones.

I remember him now, the hanging man with rope burn around his neck. As he grows bluer, my memory gets clearer. I served him champagne after he played five finger roulette with another server. I remember how he twisted the knife in the server’s hand, waiting to see him flinch or gasp.

“I know him,” I say.

“Don’t get attached darlin’, chances are, they don’t care to remember you,” The Deputy intones as she disembarks from the horse. She stretches out her hands for me to lean into, then she tugs me off the horse. It’s only when I’m swaying on my feet that I realise how sore my thighs are from the ride.

The silhouette with the rifle is close enough now for me to see she’s a woman. Beautiful in a Victorian way, all cheekbones and spotlight-stealing eyes, with a grim line where a smile used to live, as evident from the deep laugh lines in her fair skin. 

“Clementine,” The Deputy tilts her hat in greeting.

“Bringing strays now?” Clementine looks me over with seldom a tick or flinch working over her features.

I feel myself wanting to wither from her gaze. Clementine’s petite fingers grab my cheeks. I feel her polished nails leave crescent marks. She holds her winter gaze until I relent and look away.

The Deputy clicks her tongue, “Not too long ago, I was the stray.”

Displeased with what she sees, Clementine lets go of my face. “She isn’t like us.”

“Not yet,” The Deputy hooks a thumb in her belt loop.

“We’ll see about that,” Clementine makes her way towards the hanging tree. “Restrain her in the shack, Delores will know what to do with her when she returns.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” The Deputy locks her fingers around my wrist and pulls me forward.

“I never pegged you as the type to take orders,” I say in an effort to get some form of emotional response.

The Deputy licks her lips, “Every revolution has a hierarchy, but you’re right, I don’t like takin’ no-one’s orders. Maybe I just want you to myself.”

I gulp, and The Deputy barks with laughter. In my peripheral, the dove returns, stark white against the red horizon.

The shack may have looked hostile and unwelcoming on the outside, but lo and behold, it was even worse on the inside. There was no furniture except for a single table and a chair with a broken leg.

The Deputy nudges her head at a spot by the panelled wall, I follow. Then she shrugs off her leather vest and starts unbuttoning her shirt. She lets the thin material of her stained shirt fall to the ground. I notice her breasts are small, but not disturbed by the cooling desert air. She grabs her vest and buttons it back up. Now she's all leather and bare skin. She gestures for me to sit on the shirt.

In a strange way, there's a gentleness to The Deputy's actions when it's only the two of us. A kind of hidden softness. The shirt doesn't keep me warm, but it does keep the dust off my body.

“For the last touch,” The Deputy unties her bandana from her neck and holds my hands against a protruding piece of metal in the structure. She ties them fast and winks, digging into her pockets for a cigar and a matchbook.

“What's going to happen to me now that you've brought me here?” I ask at the exact same moment when more gunfire goes off outside. I imagine that sagging sound of rope creaking under the full weight of a body, suddenly, my stomach feels queasy. 

The Deputy takes a drag of her cigar, the tobacco chases after me as she exhales a puff of smoke. “Well,” she begins, “so long as them scorpions or snakes don't get in, nothin'.”

I roll my eyes, growing impatient with this game of tug and war we've been playing for next to two days now.


End file.
